I had a very pleasant interview not long since with Dr. Wilson, of Scotland, who has just returned from a tour through Palestine, and who went south as far as Petra. At Hebron he made a special contract with a Sheik, who for about one hundred and fifty dollars took him and his party to Petra and back, and left his own brother as a hostage with the governor, until they returned. Petra is in a very rough district. The El-Ghor is a wide valley, but much more elevated than I had supposed, much more so than the Dead Sea, possibly a thousand feet at the highest part. It is very destitute of vegetation, and this is especially the case with the country about Mount Hor, and Petra. There is a district more to the south that is more fertile, and has a good many inhabitants on it. The antiquities at Petra are most wonderful; a town hewn out in a sandstone rock, only one house of any size built above ground, and that a church. This building has been slightly injured by the late earthquake. There are most extensive excavations--a considerable town under ground; the tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor is an excavation. The mount is a round sugar-loaf hill, with a small level on the top. We have had fearful accounts of the prevalence of cholera at Jerusalem, Aleppo, Malta, and some other places; much fear is felt that it will visit us; may the Lord preserve us from its ravages! A few days ago, a moolah, a Mohammedan priest, died at this place. He was one of those who last spring made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on his return rode over the boys in the plain outside the town. After his death, the other priests pretended that his body would fly off to heaven, if they did not prevent it. They, therefore, had ropes tied to his body, and fastened them to other things, that the body might not get away. They held on to the ropes as they took the body to the grave-yard. On their way the bearers stopped several times, and would pull this way and that way, as if some invisible power would not let them go forward, and the pretence was, that the dead man was not willing to go that way, or to be buried. They at length, however, got him to the grave, put him in, and made great lamentation over him. This is a sample of the tricks they play to delude the people. I spent an hour on the 17th of last month, very pleasantly, with Lord Lindsay, who has travelled extensively in these countries. From Egypt he passed Mount Sinai and the Elanetic Gulf--visited Petra, Bosrah, Gerash, and most of Palestine and Palmyra. He says there are many ruins about Bosrah; a Roman road thirty feet wide runs from that place towards Bagdad. It is in a good state of preservation, but not used. Lord Lindsay had the affliction to lose a brother, who travelled with him; if I mistake not, he died from what is called a stroke of the sun. Means were used to preserve the body, and he took the corpse with him in the same vessel to England. LETTER XIX. _Beyroot, October 14th, 1838._